Kerry Stokes has billions of reasons to add to Southern Cross drama

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Over the past year, media veterans have been scratching their heads as an improbable story played out.

Billionaire Kerry Stokes, a self-made billionaire and corporate brawler par excellence, was walking away from his beloved Seven West Media group without a whimper after selling it into a merger with a radio company best known for broadcasting the dad rock and sport Triple M stations.

Stokes gave up his chairmanship to Southern Cross Austereo’s Heith Mackay-Cruise in February, and watched as Seven West’s pick for the CEO job, Jeff Howard, got axed almost immediately.

This month, Southern Cross was canvassing the sale of its newspaper division containing The West Australian tabloid. Combined with Channel Seven’s Perth outpost, the papers gave Stokes political influence in the Big State that fellow mining billionaires Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart could only dream about.

Mackay-Cruise wanted to focus on the cross-platform alchemy of integrating the national Triple M and Hit radio networks with the merged company’s Seven Network. That made sense financially. A handful of state-based newspapers in a national media company focused on TV and radio is not a natural fit.

Kerry Stokes’ old board back in control of Seven owner as chair steps down

Publicly, Stokes didn’t make a sound. Perhaps the billionaire’s bruising past couple of years with his media assets had taken a toll, industry insiders wondered.

Seven........

© Brisbane Times